Black and White, by David Macaulay (Houghton Mifflin...

June 10, 1990|By Mary Harris Veeder.

Black and White, by David Macaulay (Houghton Mifflin, $14.95, ages 8 and up). Catch the mood by noticing first that the book is not in black and white. In color, four different stories, titled ``Seeing Things,`` ``Problem Parents,`` ``Waiting Game`` and ``Udder Chaos,`` appear on the quadrants of each page. ``Careful inspection,`` as the tongue-in-cheek warning label advises, will be necessary. ``Udder Chaos`` is my favorite. ``Ask any farmer. It`s a nightmare. But it happens.`` If you liked ``Twin Peaks,`` this may be your summer book. No murder, no Tibet, but lots of mystery.

Beneath a Blue Umbrella, rhymes by Jack Prelutsky, illustrations by Garth Williams (Greenwillow, $15.95, ages 4-7). Prelutsky makes poetry more fun for children than almost anyone else, and Williams` full-page illustrations for each poem provide an unhurried complement to the jolly pacing and Mother Goose-logic of Prelutsky`s world. ``Tippity Toppity, Upside-down Roy/ was a remarkable upside-down boy``; ``Idaho Rose, dressed in polka-dot clothes``-

Prelutsky finds the bounce in proper names and simple actions.

The Seven Chinese Brothers, by Margaret Mahy, ilustrations by Jean and Mou-sien Tseng (Scholastic, $12.95, ages 4-8). ``Once upon a time,`` this folktale begins, and we see China in the third century B.C., when Ch`in Shih Huang, China`s emperor, was driving slave labor to erect the Great Wall. The Seven Brothers each had a special skill, and it takes a week for all of them to get into and out of trouble. The illustrations reveal the historical research that went into them, but they wear that effort gracefully, providing lucid visual pleasures to match the calm telling of the tale.

Stonewords, by Pam Conrad (Harper & Row, $12.95, ages 10 and up). Taking the basics of time-slip fantasy-a location where times coexist, rules for traveling through time-Conrad creates a better than ordinary tale of adventure. Zoe, looking back, tells stories of her encounter with the Zoe who lived in her grandparents` house 100 years before and of her relationship with that Zoe`s distant mother. The present-day Zoe`s ``real`` mother has such a sense of strangeness about her that we move easily into the ``unreal`` world that Zoe`s grandparents consider imaginary.

The Secret Language of the SB, by Elizabeth Scarboro, (Viking, $11.95, ages 8-12). ``SB`` stands for Something Big, and Adam can always tell when it`s going to happen. He`s correct the day that Susan, an 11 year old from Taiwan, arrives in his household as a foster child. Correct but not ecstatic: She`s a girl, she`s too quiet and her arrival means that the house no longer is his alone after school. Scarboro`s low-key text doesn`t reach for any cute reconciliations, and it has a feel for the things that actually matter to children-like watching reruns on afternoon television and struggling with long division. Adam is believable, learning something of the differences between cultures without sounding like a selfless saint.